R.I.P Peter Steele

An excerpt from Xero Tolerance, by Peter Steele — a song about unrequited love:

I’ll kill you toniiiighhhht

I’ll kill you toniiiighhhht

I’ll kill you toniiiighhhht

I’ll fuckin’, kill youuuuuuuuuu…

I got a pickax in the trunk of my car

I’ll put it on the grinder to get it real sharp

There’s an ugly green monster in my head

Won’t leave me alone, until you’re dead…

Took some steroids and adrenaline Finlandia vodka and hallucinogens Mixed it with blood and orange juice Liquid protein and ice cubes…

I left out verses in between. For those who dare – have a lovely listen to the madness below. But you gotta pump it up – tee hee! He filled me with the fuel I needed to continue to exist, the early Peter Steele, more than the latter. I don’t begrudge him for the later things that he did.

I did hate the song that he wrote with a girl named Tawana on welfare. The song has a German name, for let’s just say the underclass, which has horrible horrible implications – don’t worry, I wrote him a nice letter about it. At the end of that letter, on the other side of the page I told him to ‘kiss my black ass’. I wrote it to take up the entire second page.

He wrote me back! Said my letter was intelligent and that I had great taste in music– my baby was so fucking funny! His humor surfaced also in his covers of sugary sweet songs from the seventies that he sang in a deep growly voice.

He was darkly humorous. He said he was misunderstood – people thought he was a neo nazi, people missed the twisted humor of his songs, which were often taken literally. One of his band mates was Jewish. When I read a very positive review of his album in the Voice, it helped me feel comfortable listening to him because the writer was a woman — he wrote a song which could easily be taken as an offense to women that I absolutely get and love. He said he was happy that I ‘got him’.

In his letter, he told me he’d slip me some tickets. I think he said that I should contact him back. So I wrote him with my phone number. I came home from work and my telephone rang. “Can I speak to Sandee Harris please,” the heavy voice said. I knew who it was. HE FUCKING CALLED ME! WE TALKED FOR TWO GLORIOUS HOURS! From that point on he was mine!

I have three of his albums, but I only listen to Retaliation from when he was with Carnivore, and Slow, Deep and Hard, the album that he made with Type-O-Negative. Peter has helped me over and over, to rage, rage against the metaphorical dying of the light, against an existence predetermined by somebody else.

This morning I listened to Xero Tolerance for inspiration. The lyrics pulsed through my head during my morning jog: ‘I’ll kill you toniiiiiiight, I’ll fuckin’ kill youuuu!’ Yeah, I was mad about existence or something like that. (Hey I do listen to lovey dovey coo coo music too every now and again.)

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a death metal enthusiast. Peter wasn’t death metal – but he was Death and he was Metal – and he was six foot six!

He was the Gothic Prince that I would ultimately gravitate to in my exploration of darkness (not really a bad negative thing, really). How do you pay tribute to a man who writes a song called Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity? You entitle a collection of stories – and this isn’t a plug, really, otherwise I’d tell you to go out and buy the damn thing — Why Did You Try to Fuck Somebody You Hate? And Other Mean-Spirited Tales, Told by a Sword-Chinned Bitch.